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Hey all. So, when Google start e-mailing you telling you they are going to cancel your ad revenue, it is time to take a look…

Sorry for my tardiness – this forum has become a bit (ok, a lot) neglected of late.

I’ve been doing some bulk deleting. No idea why it became such a problem. Akismet (the anti-spam engine) confirms that it is receiving API calls, but strangely it has gone from classifying more posts as spam than ham to the other way around. This would imply the spammers have found a way to circumvent Akismet. I’ll look in to this as I’m not going to pay for something that is actually choosing to mark obvious spam as ham!

For what it is worth, my understanding is that the heating is never really off, just “set back”. If the measured temperature drops below the set back point, the boiler will fire up regardless of the time. The idea is that it takes less energy to keep, and warm up from, a relatively low set back temperature to a comfort temperature than it does to heat from completely off to comfort level. Check the set back point you have in your app/thermostat. I think it defaults to about 15 degrees.

I can’t explain why this would suddenly start happening, but if this happens all the time, have you tried unpairing the bedroom dimmer from the living room on the app – it could be that it somehow ended up in pairing mode when someone issued an on command to the living room. Remember that the app doesn’t know much about what is actually paired to it – the dimmer itself learns the device codes it is expected to respond to during the pairing phase and when it hears commands for these device codes it will respond whether it is the only device or not. I have two dimmers who both think they are garden lights deliberately – I always want both circuits controlled together so only one device on the app is necessary and both dimmers respond to it.

To unpair, put the bedroom dimmer in pairing mode and use the app to turn off the living room lights. All being well, the amber LED will flash a couple of times and your problem will be solved.

It’s been a while since I launched this site and it has been popular. So much so that I’ve been loath to update the underlying software for fear of breaking the site completely (not helped by the theme I used being incompatible with later versions of the software and the developers of the theme not being interested in supporting their user base!).

Anyway, I’ve waited long enough and the time has come that I have to do something so I’ve thrown up a new site design and am now in the latter stages of development and early stages of testing.

I’d appreciate some feedback and testing if anyone is willing to help. All you need to do is visit http://staging.lightwaverfcommunity.org.uk and then come back HERE and post your constructive feedback. I’d be particularly interested in how the site performs on mobile and tablet platforms as well as big powerful desktops.

The forum is using an old version of the database so please don’t be tempted to post anything new or comment on any old posts – your comments will be trashed next time I overwrite the database.

I am going to use this as a platform for developing some new features in the not too distant future including better social networking, a classified ads section and a rework of the price comparison to bring it up to date. If you have any other ideas, I can’t promise anything, but I’d love to hear them.

LED dimming is a huge minefield not least because it isn’t actually possible to ‘dim’ an LED – the dimming effect is achieved using Pulse Width Modulation – basically flashing the LED so fast the eye cannot see, but varying the number of on vs off cycles over time to make it appear dimmer.

The original 200 series dimmers worked really well with the Lumilife lamps, but not much else. When Megaman took over the distribution, they re-worked the design to offer better dimming capability with more LED lamps, but at the expense of the soft on/soft off of the older dimmers. Unsurprisingly they are now tuned to work well with Megaman lamps which is of course Megaman’s biggest money maker.

When I met with one of the directors of Megaman, I was told why the LEDHut/Lumilife lamps were not the best – stack them high, sell them cheap, low quality etc – but frankly who cares, they work fine for me and cost me a lot less than Megaman ones and all of my rooms (bar two recent refurbs) all have 200 series dimmers in them. They have served me (and others on this forum) well.

There is a lamp compatibility guide in the features section of this site, but it isn’t obvious and hasn’t been updated since the 400 series dimmers were released. If you want to contribute something to this, please let me know.

Just kidding, I don’t think I really have a policy when it comes to classifieds other than the usual disclaimer that I’ll accept no responsibility either way if things turn sour or you electrocute yourself due to dodgy kit. If it becomes too popular, then I may review this.

Commercial sales are a different matter as some people will tell you. The forum is kept alive by advertising and affiliate commission so I need to keep those guys happy too, but small scale stuff will be fine for now.

There was (are) RGB controllers out there, Megaman had a bunch of them in stock when I last asked. The problem is that they require common cathode LED strips which is like Rocking Horse Sh*t in the UK because a) the market has been swamped with el-cheapo Chinese common anode kit and b) because you have to buy 1000M at a time and no one is willing to do so!. All of the cheap-as-chips strip out there is common anode which isn’t compatible. It is however possible to convert between the two with a simple electronic circuit involving three resistors and three transistors, but no one is manufacturing this. If you have the balls to have a go yourself, google it, I did and am thinking about having a go at some point, it doesn’t look difficult.

Other than that, you can stick to just a single colour (no issue with strips) or use RGB strip with an inline relay – one of the 240V ones will work if your controller remembers it’s last setting when powered on, or you could use one of the older volt free relays and wire this inline with the anode (+) connection of your strip. This would have the advantage that your controller should maintain it’s state, but the disadvantage that you are keeping the PSU and controller powered even when you have the lights off and would need two controllers – one to set the colour, and a LWRF one to switch it on/off.

To enable 2-way feedback, the device itself will need to transmit it’s status. This isn’t currently possible for the existing dimmers and sockets. The door sensor and PIR transmit an ON signal to their paired devices when they are activated, and while this is received by the Wi-Fi link (it has a 433Mhz receiver I believe) the firmware doesn’t do anything with it.

You would probably be best off using a RFXCom RFXtrx433 to listen for the commands being sent from Wireless On/Off switches and then hide dimmers and relays out of the way or use inline ones to actually control the connected loads. This would have the added advantage that your AMX system may be able to utilise the RFXtrx433 to transmit the required control signals for the loads too.

Yes, you would need to butcher the insides to remove the touch dimming function. I had one years ago that died on me so I did this and fitted an inline switch, fixed the lamp, but this was before the days of LWRF. Don’t forget you would need to provide some means of switching it on and off though so you’d probably want a Wireless On/Off switch too.

I suspect the 100% brightness at power on is actually to provide better support for dimmable compact fluorescent lamps which need the full voltage to start up and are then happier to take a lower voltage to dim them once lit. LED’s IMHO are less picky about this.

This post was originally written before the full transition of marketing activity to Megaman. The Smart Shop is what LightwaveRF Retail used to be i.e. no more official than any other retailer. I believe that the name change was to keep Megman (and their other retailers) happy and to divide the LightwaveRF marketing site from the LightwaveRF Retail Ltd (now smart shop) retail site.

I need to do some work on the price comparison. The site pulls in the prices automatically, but one example where this us flawed is with the dimmers. Most of the true LightwaveRF sellers will now be selling the 400 series dimmers (or version 2 if you like). B&Q sell Siemens dimmers which are licensed and will still be the old 200 series which still work but perhaps aren’t as compatible as the 400 with LED lamps.